NURSERY
Nursery children have listened to different versions of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The moral of this story is not to be greedy. If the troll had not been greedy, he could have had a hearty meal with the first and second goat. However, the troll chose to be greedy for the biggest prize, and ended up in the river under the bridge.
We discussed different endings to the story, giving our own opinions. A popular opinion was they hoped for a friendly troll who was the goat’s friend and that he didn’t enjoy goat for dinner.
A lot of our activities this week were according to the chosen book theme. These included cutting out characters from the story and ordering them from smallest to biggest. I never cease to be amazed at the weekly progress of our Nursery children. The cutting skills the children showed this week, when cutting on curved and zigzag lines was outstanding.
Writing skills were further developed with concentrating on keeping on the line when tracing patterns.
The children thoroughly enjoyed crafting gingerbread men out of playdough. The sensory benefits of crafting with playdough are many. Squishing, smashing, pushing, pulling, twisting, cutting…all the fun of playdough. Just the basic act of playing with playdough builds those hands muscles. Playdough also comes in a variety of different consistencies some of which require more strength than others to manipulate making it fairly easy to meet individual needs.
In communication and literacy, the children were encouraged to sequence the story by putting the pictures in the correct order while recounting the story.
Completing the patterns and enjoying the number bridge game were amongst the favourite number activities this week.
RECEPTION
Our focus book this week was The Three Billy Goats Gruff. What fun we had acting out the parts of each of the Billy Goats and the Troll! We used different voices for the different characters and small and big actions when we acted out the story. We remembered the sequence of the story and were able to tell what the sequence cards had on them before putting them into the story sequence. We experimented using water colour paints, learning how to use them, how to make the colours darker or lighter, how to hold our brushes correctly and finally… how to wash our brushes and clean our water containers. Our cutting skills were put to the test with very complicated patterns that we were able to cut out, even though some of thought it would be too difficult. We persevered and were able to cut out even the most intricate patterns. Another happy, very busy was had by all in Reception!
